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Monday, October 03, 2011

Sometimes historians can group together a series of
events and tag them with an overall identifying name that connects all of the
events together such as the Civil War or the American Revolution, but certain
events just stand out and beg to be treated special because they serve as pivot
points such as the firing on Ft. Sumter or the Battle of Saratoga.

Then there are certain events that might not be
pivotal but shouldn’t be ignored in the classroom simply because they touch
upon so many different instructional moments such as the Mussel Slough Tragedy.

Westward expansion, growth of the railroad including
the impact on settlement, muckrakers and their role in the Progressive Era,
perspective and accuracy regarding the historical record and even a bit of
vocabulary instruction regarding geographic landforms can be handled by
examining this little known event in California history.

First of all….what the heck is a slough? On the west coast of North America a slough
is defined as a treeless, secondary channel of a river delta. Mussel Slough is an area that runs from Kings
River to Tulare Lake. After the Civil
War the marshes surrounding Tulare Lake were drained so by the late 1800s it
was a broad, dry plain that was suitable only for cattle ranches. By the turn of the century the lake was
completely dry.

The Mussel Slough Tragedy occurred on May 11, 1888 on
a homestead belonging to Henry D. Brewer northwest of Hanford, California. The timing of the tragedy was close to the
beginning of the Progressive Era. However,
to get a full understanding we have to look back to 1866 when Congress began
authorizing various railroad concerns in the United States to begin building
tracks across the United States linking east and west. The Southern Pacific Railroad was contracted
to lay the tracks through the Mussel Slough area after land lots containing 640
acres each were set up. The railroad was
given control of the odd number lots while the even numbered lots were set
aside for homesteading.

This meant the federal government controlled the
process of getting the even number land lots into the hands of settlers while
the odd number lots were under the control of the Southern Pacific
railroad. Once the rail route was
determined there was plenty of land left over for the railroad to sell to
interested homesteaders.

It is this point in the story where things began to
go wrong. Southern Pacific began to
advertise land for sell to homesteaders stating the land would be $2.50 an acre
and there would be no charge for improvements.
In the meantime the railroad had deliberately avoided getting patents
for its land grants which basically means in simplistic terms they didn’t
legally record a deed to deliberately avoid taxes on the land. This also meant homesteaders made deals with
the railroad to purchase land but the railroad would refuse to convey titles to
them. Even so the homesteaders settled
into life living along the slough and made improvements to their property such as
building irrigation systems. Naturally
these improvements increased the land’s value.

At some point the railroad decided they actually
wanted more than $2.50 an acre and in some cases when the ranchers balked they
put the land back on the open market.
The dispute in land ownership grew even more tense when Congress failed to
pass a proposed a bill that would put the matter of the price for land to
rest.

The settlers formed a group called the Settler’s
League in 1878 and made appeals to federal officials and the courts. They even made an appeal to President
Rutherford B. Hayes during his visit to San Francisco in 1880 advising federal
and court officials were being bribed by the railroad.

More settlers moved into the area thinking the
lawsuit would favor the homesteaders, but this made the situation worse as the
railroad termed them squatters and vowed to remove anyone who didn’t pay their
asking price.

On May 11, 1880 several members of the Settler’s
League had met together for a picnic and all was well until they heard a group
of men backed by the railroad consisting of a U.S. Marshall, a Southern Pacific
land appraiser and two locals was headed their way and in were in the process
of evicting people from their land.

A group of homesteaders described as being lightly
armed set out from the picnic to meet with the railroad party. It was reported their intention was to ask
the group to delay any further evictions until the pending court case had been
settled.

Both groups met up at a homestead maintained by
Henry D. Brewer. A gunfight between the
two parties quickly ensued with most of the settlers being killed or
wounded. Six of the victims were
carried to the porch of the Brewer house.
A tall oak next to the porch became known as Tragedy Oak. In recent years when it blew down during a
storm a piece of the tree was preserved and is displayed at a local elementary
school.

Seventeen people were indicted by a federal grand
jury with five being found guilty of willfully interfering with marshal in
performance of his duties. It has to be
noted however the jail time was hardly what could be called hard time. Most of the men were allowed to have their
wives with them. The ranchers who lived
were heroes and those who died were remembered as martyrs.

Of course the journalist who got involved during the
events leading up to the lawsuit and the gunfight and subsequent deaths just
fanned the flames. It was the perfect
opportunity for muckraking.

While the Progressive Era muckrackers have been
given the credit for many great things while they cried out to end corruption
and social injustice including fighting monopolies such as Standard Oil, the
establishment of the Pure Food and Drug Act, and the creation of child labor
laws their main tool of the trade was sensationalizing details to promote the
emotional aspects of the event or actions they reported.

The exact history of the events leading up to the
tragedy and the gunfight itself is muddled due to fabrications and
exaggerations on each side.

The event was targeted by muckrackers including W.C.
Morrow who wrote BloodMoney (1882), C. C. (Charles Cyrel)Post
who wrote Driven From Sea to Seaor Justa Campin’ (1888), and The
Octopus: A Story of California by Frank Norris (1901). You can read Mr. Post’s novel here
from Google Books.

Political cartoons were published as well like the
one I’ve included with this post titled ‘The Retribution Comet’. It was published in The Wasp showing railroad tycoons Leland Stanford and Collis Potter
Huntington robbing the graves of the victims.

Today, many historians argue the works of literature
exaggerated the fault of the railroad and romanticized the ranchers according to
the Jeffersonian agrarian ideal where Jefferson stated, “those who labor in the
earth are the chosen people of God.”

There are some truths. The railroad did have their hand in the
pocket of many politicians and court officials. Leland Stanford, the president of Southern
Pacific had also been the governor of California. Even though the railroad argued they never
intended to keep the property at $2.50 an acre it was unclear to the
settlers. Many of the settlers who
flocked to Mussel Slough did so after the situation became inflamed and were
actually squatters who were hoping the case would go in their favor.

While the story did grow to what some sources
describe as mythic proportions and turned out to be an archetypical story of
the conflict between pioneer settlers and monopoly corporate greed many of the
sources are second-hand and flawed. The
true story is a gray area somewhere in the middle.

In the end the case came down on the side of the
railroad, but Southern Pacific did agree to lower the cost per acre slightly,
and most people stayed on their land.

This
site states, ““Historical accounts vary considerably and nearly all have
passed along from generation to generation errors of fact and substance,
ranging from relatively minor mistakes in spelling the names of combatants and
tabulating the body count to important errors of chronology and sequence of
settlement, the legal issues involved, the character motivation, and behavior
of drama and the influence of the conflict on landholdings and errors of
chronology, legal issues, and the goals of the railroad and the Mussel Slough
settlers, even dominates a leading California state-approved history textbook
for fourth grade public school classrooms.”

How would I use this event in the classroom? As I stated above I think this event
provides the perfect opportunity to hit on so many issues – Westward expansion,
growth of the railroad including the impact on settlement, muckrakers and their
role in the Progressive Era, perspective and accuracy regarding the historical
record and even a bit of vocabulary instruction regarding geographic landforms
can be handled by examining this little known event in California history.

Most certainly I think this event lends itself to a
discussion on historical accuracy and how myths are formed. I think it would be interesting to present
several forms of evidence such as railroad documents regarding advertising the
land, newspaper accounts, political cartoons, and court documents to students
and allow them to investigate the matter and decide for themselves where the
truth lies…..in that large and murky gray area.

The link to the [web] site that states this incident dominates a 4th grade text, yields a message that site can't be found or something similar, does author or any reader who mighta got there earlier know the name of the site or text? --XOCBoy

I had found the original link on a PDF from Bakersfield College. When I searched the quote today....6-25-12..I also found it on Google Books. The book title is "Sunset Limeted:The Southern Pacific Railroad and the Development of the American West, 1850-1930". There is a chapter titled "Mussel Slough" and the quotation is taken from the first page of the chapter. You can find this book on Google Books and access the particular chapter. I hope this helps.

This was a personal tragedy to our family in that my great grandmother's first husband, Mills D Hartt, was one of the people killed in this conflict. He bought his land from the railroad and he felt he needed help from the local law to remove the "squatters" from his land. He must have realized it would get heated as he put my g-grandmother and their very young daughter on a train and sent them to stay with a relative in Georgetown, CA. The next day my g-grandmother heard of her husbands fate. She and her daughter went back to Hanford and finally settled his estate in August of 1880. She was heartbroken. Mills was the love of her life. She left California to make a new life for her and her young daughter in Colorado near her parents, never to return. There she met and married my g-grandfather.Linda Amo SidersNative Californian